It is common for Customer Premises Equipment (CPE) at a residential site, home, home office, small office, apartment, building, or like premises, to have a telephone system utilizing analog RJ-11 twisted pair telephone lines, wiring, jacks and devices that comply with conventional analog ring signal transmission requirements; e.g., traditional Bellcore/Telcordia analog transmission requirements specifically designed to work on Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS) telephone systems. Such a CPE telephone system traditionally has been connected to a circuit-switched landline phone network for purposes of receiving telephone service and has provided CPE telephones with little to no advanced media features which have otherwise become commonplace in connection with the use of cellular/mobile telephones operating on wireless digital networks.
Analog RJ-11 twisted pair telephone wiring, lines and devices provide significantly limited functionally when compared, for instance, to the functionality of cellular or mobile phones operating on wireless digital networks. By way of example, mobile phones and like handsets commonly offer advanced media features including the ability to receive and display graphics, still images and video, to play audio such as user-selected music ring tones and the like, and to display other data or information in connection with receiving an incoming call or otherwise. In contrast, CPE telephone devices on analog RJ-11 twisted pair lines do not offer such features.
In recent years, it has become more common for CPE to include a modem, such as a DOCSIS cable modem or DSL modem, connected to an Internet service provider's network to provide the customer with Internet access via the modem. With the advent of Voice-over-Internet-Protocol (VoIP), DOCSIS cable modems and DSL modems can be used, not only for purposes of providing high-speed Internet access to a customer, but also to provide telephone service for the premises. For this specific purpose, the CPE can include a media terminal adapter (MTA) or the like to provide the VoIP service.
The MTA interfaces with an IP network, for example, via the above referenced modem, and is operable to adapt VoIP data for use by other customer premises equipment, such as a telephone system including, for instance, one or more separate base units and/or a set of handsets that may be distributed about the premises. The MTA can be used for purposes of delivering all basic phone services to the customer such as handling voice compression, packetization, security, and call signaling and support older phone handsets and fax machines. A typical MTA will include a Subscriber Line Interface Card (SLIC) that enables the MTA to drive the analog telephone lines or local telephone wiring loop existing throughout the premises.
As a further option, the CPE can include the MTA embedded within (i.e., built directly into) a DOCSIS cable or DSL modem to bundle Internet and VoIP services via installation of a single device. Such a combination is often referred to as an eMTA (embedded Media Terminal Adapter). The MTA and modem components of an eMTA are typically assigned separate Media Access Control (MAC) and IP addresses, and the eMTA includes jacks such as analog RJ-11 twisted pair jacks for connection to RJ-11 twisted pair telephone line wiring provided or looped throughout the premises to which CPE telephone devices can be connected.
The MTA or eMTA can deliver basic features, functionality, and ringing capabilities to the CPE telephone devices connected to the RJ-11 wiring. With respect to ringing capabilities, for example, the MTA or eMTA generates an alternating voltage ring signal between the so-called tip and ring wires on the RJ-11 twisted pair and causes the CPE telephone devices to activate its ringer in a generic manner to provide an alert of an incoming call. The cadence and timing of ringing can be altered by the MTA or eMTA by the generation of a ring signal with different duty cycles (i.e. “on” and “off” timing) and cadence. However, this merely changes the pattern of the ring and the ring is still generic.
Essentially, the requirements of using existing analog RJ-11 twisted pair lines, traditional telephone ring signal transmissions, and legacy telephones at the customer premises provide a limitation for VoIP service to offer telephone features similar to that offered by the cellular/mobile phone market operating on digital networks.